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South Dakota Dems Back Teachers on HB 1234 Referral Drive

Teachers, your superintendents may not want you petitioning HB 1234 to a public vote. Other allies may be staying out of the fight over Governor Daugaard's destructive education plan.

But the South Dakota Democratic Party is willing to stand with you in defense of schools and students. Party chairman Ben Nesselhuf announced this afternoon that the party's State Central Committee voted unanimously to support the HB 1234 referendum drive. Either the Dems have a keen sense of justice, or they smell a winning issue for the party... or both! Whichever way, thank you, Dems!

If you're looking for talking points as you circulate petitions, the Dems break down Governor Daugaard's education agenda thus:

  • Impose a disproven testing-based education system
  • Create competition between educators
  • End the due process that protects teachers from arbitrary firing, and
  • Provide no way to finance any of these damaging, mandatory new programs! [Ben Nesselhuf, e-mail to friends of the South Dakota Democratic Party, 2012.04.10]

The Dems also note that the Governor "completely ignored" widespread public opposition to HB 1234 (don't forget: the only people attending the signing of the bill were executive branch flunkies).

As practical support for the referendum, the Dems have posted a petition request webpage to complement SDEA's petition request page. If you aren't circulating and want to—or if you've filled up all your petitions and need more!—hit either website, get some petitions, and bang, bang, bang on the doors, baby!

3 Comments

  1. grudznick 2012.04.10

    Or are they just standing against something?

    Actually, a friend who is a liberal activist teacher who twitters on his computer (but who is still a swell guy and was giving me a ride home from an appointment) said that this endorsement is "like having a claw check signed onto your bill." I'm not sure what that means but the way he said it seemed to indicate it wasn't good.

  2. caheidelberger Post author | 2012.04.10

    Is someone making fun of my favorite legislator from Scotland?

  3. Steve Sibson 2012.04.11

    Thanks for the link to the petition request. The reason I gave for opposing HB1234 was that the merit pay was to be tied to Common Core Standards. Merit pay should be tied to classroom performance.

Comments are closed.